Triggers

Triggers can be set up as pre-defined rules in the system where notifications to line managers will be sent once these rules are activated.

Should managers fail to action a trigger, they will continue to receive notifications daily until this trigger is completed within the system.

For example, you could create a trigger which generates an alert when an employee had more than 4 instances of unauthorised absence in a 12-month period or when an employee has more than 5 days of sickness in a 3-month period and so on.

Important Note: Triggers will not be activated immediately in the system; they are activate at 00:00 daily. For example, if a trigger is activated at 14:00, the notifications will be sent out to the manager and the data present in the system by the following morning.

The options for creating triggers are:

Name

An informative name which describes the trigger

Type

Currently, triggers can be created for Absence, Bradford factor and Lateness.

Metrics - field 1

Number – for example 4

Metrics - field 2

Choose from days or instances

Metrics - field 3

Choose either Any time off, Any authorised time off, Any unauthorised time off or choose a specific time off type from the list

Period - field 1

Number – for example 12

Period - field 2

Choose from days, weeks, months or years

Active

You can choose whether to set the trigger active now or delay it until you are sure the data it will capture is what you want – see below for information on testing which

As aforementioned, HR-level users can set triggers for Bradford factor scores, alerting managers when an employee reaches a certain BF value within a specific time period. However, it is important to understand that a single instance of absence could set off a number of triggers if there are triggers set to fire at varying Bradford factor scores. Triggers can also be set for lateness and absence, working in the same manner.

Testing triggers

Once you have built your triggers, it may be useful to be able to see which employees time off would cause the trigger to activate as soon as it is set active and runs for the first time.

Next to each trigger in the action column there are options from left to right: active, test, edit and delete.

If you click on test, the system will then display a simple output of which employees would cause the trigger to activate should it be run at that time.

In this example, the trigger would activate for this employee and an email will be sent to their manager – the output also displays the dates which activated the trigger.

Note on dates

When an absence trigger runs it only considers the end date for any approved time off request – if the time off request is not approved or is pending then it will not activate.

If an end date is shown as 00/00/0000 (or any variant thereof depending on your localisation settings) this means that the timeoff is open i.e. it does not yet have an end date hence the employee is still off.

In the above example, had one of the dates been open timeoff then the trigger would not have activated as you would not be able to do anything whilst the employee is off work – as soon as the employee returns and an end date is entered then it would activate the trigger as you would then be in a position to action.

Trigger data

Once a trigger is set active, any activation will be stored in the system and can be viewed by HR.

On the main trigger screen, there is a button marked Trigger data at the bottom - this will list all current activations which have not yet been actioned.

Additionally, in this section you can delete any active trigger data should this be necessary.

Actioned triggers cannot be viewed from this screen but can be viewed in Reporting along with the person who performed the action, the date and their comments.

Actioning a trigger

Once a manager receives an email, they will be given a link to action the trigger – additionally, this can be accessed in the employee file under Triggers.

The only option a manager has is to Action the trigger – they cannot delete the trigger.

Actioning a trigger simply involves filling in a text box which details what you did – it could be that you simply talked to the employee or possibly you took a more formal action. Either way, once you have entered something into the text box it is considered actioned and will no longer be sent in the daily email digest.

Once a trigger is actioned, the manager can then view the trigger and the details but cannot modify the details in any way.

Viewing triggers

There are two reports specifically for triggers in the Time off section of reporting:

Active triggers

This is a list of all active triggers which have not yet been actioned.

Actioned triggers

This is a list of all actioned triggers including who completed the action, the date and their comments.